The Good & Boring of Ford’s Social Media Marketing Videos
Ford’s been doing a lot of things right lately. Its producing good-looking, well-made vehicles and consumers seem to be responding by buying them.
Company leaders have certainly jumped on the social media marketing bandwagon as well, but their video strategy is kind of head-scratching. Some videos are clearly professionally done, and others look pretty basic like someone inside the company is putting them together. A couple of examples…
Good: Ford Fiesta vs. Lamborghini
Boring: 2011 Ford Explorer Clay Mockup in the Wind Tunnel
The “good” video works. It has upbeat music, a fun concept, and tight editing. Do your best to ignore the annoying host and you have a memorable video.
The “boring” video doesn’t need to be. It’s focusing on the aerodynamic attention put into the Ford Explorer. This could be really interesting in the hands of a professional storyteller. Instead, we get no music to set a mood and poorly-paced editing.
The reason this drives me crazy… yes, I wrote “drives”… is that someone at Ford clearly understands the power of video and social media but still short-changes us. They raise our expectations with quality work only to disappoint us with a ho-hum effort.
If you’re going to do something, do it right. If you’re only going to half-try, you can expect half-results.
–Tony Gnau